Red Axes – The Beach Goths. Killing it both on the house and indie scene and they’re from Tel Aviv. What’s not to like?

Run The Jewels – 3 – Legend Has it and Don’t get Captured straight off the bat as singles but as a whole it’s like a techno cut up masterclass with the greatest MCs over the top This is just fucking amazing music. They smashed it at Field Day

Orb – Natrality. Amazing psyche with a spot of early Wolfmother vibe. Brave to choose a name with that much competition on Spotify

Tyler the Creator – Flower Boy. Some one has been listening to Magical Mystery Tour and this is the result. A beautiful, woozy hip hop LP. I missed it this summer but there’s always next year…..

Rone – Mirapolis. Brilliant if patchy (some of the spoken word/vocal bits don’t work) French Masterpiece. It has that flowing theme that I like where it’s the sum of it’s parts but Origami is the standout track here

Logan Lucky OST – This fairly average Steven Soderbergh film has a cracking David Holmes composed/compiled soundtrack. Standouts are The Groundhogs boogie-prog 3744 James Road and Lord Such’s Flashing Lights

Blade Runner OST – This was easily my favourite film of the year and Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch build on Vangelis’s legacy whilst adding a brooding layer of soundscape techno

I got bored of albums so here’s…..

Tracks

Fucked Up Year of the Snake/Passacaglia – A welcome, epic return to form. The former is 23 minutes long so you’ve been warned

Orb – Man in the Sand/You are Right – Just so much bouncy swag!

Shame -Concrete. Indie’s great white hope. Live they are a joyous mash of new wave, Happy Mondays bagginess with a dash of The Fall for good measure. Can’t wait for an album

The Horrors – Press Enter to Exit. Sounding almost identical to a slowed down version of Happy Mondyas Rave on (Club Mix obvs nerds!) this is an amazing bit of ambient, baggy pop. It’s all about the end so stick with it

Tyler the Creator – Garden Shed. Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream. Surprising Mellowness from the man that gave us “Yonkers”

Falling Acid – Tin Man. Repeat listens especially depressurising on the way home from work just confirmed this as an epic ambient acid piece

DJ Shadow – Corridors. After the challenging “The Mountain will Fall” album this is a welcome return for a hummable tune and the sheer scope of the epicness involved is impressive. If it didn’t have the skidding beat the ending would be all over Blue Planet

Pond – Colder than Ice/ Someone sweep me off my feet. You’ve got to make space for this album as it’s an epic 80′s synth prog clusterfuck in all the best ways. So ambitious there’s even an 80′s sax thrown in there. I’d best describe it as like a soundtrack for a cartoon version of Barbarella if that existed

Black Spuma – Orme/No Cube. International Feel’s Black Spuma continue to make music like it’s 1991 with a perfect blend of house, breakbeat and Baleric chill as demonstrated on these 2 beauties

Mike Shannon – Sunrise (Original Mix). lf you’re going to watch the sunrise anytime soon this should be the track!

The Black Madonna – He s the voice I hear. Is this a classic a la Strings of Life or French Kiss? It feels like it and every time I’ve played this out this year it’s got terrific response

Tom Trago – Use Me again. Not only is this a banging disco thumper of a tune but I think it has the most wonderful manipulation of a sample that I’ve ever heard. So simple but breathtaking. You need to hear the original by Millie Jackson (from the track “We got to hit it off”) to grasp it’s evil genius

So it’s been a slow year for the Antiswarm with only 2 shows posted, but in these days of sensory overload I feel quality not quantity needs to win the race. Having said that I promise to do better next year! So to try and redress the balance (a bit) here are my top 10 tracks and albums of 2015. Before I started my faulty memory told me it had been a fairly quiet year compared to the last few music wise but I was pleasantly surprised by my trawl through Spotify and iTunes. And so, here are the fruits of me meticulously poring over this year’s musical landscape so you don’t have to. Any additions, corrections or just general chat are welcome at antiswarmjim@gmail.com and you can follow me at TheAntiswarm on Twitter. Perhaps I’ll get the hang of Instagram next year. Who knows eh?

Last year Jim dissolved the Jim Jones Review saying that the Rock n’ roll thing had run it’s course. He’s now persuing a more mysterious vibe with the Righteous Mind and with a new album coming in 2016 Boil Yer Blood was the first taster for his ravenous fans. It did not disappoint!

Having given us the fantastic Big Dumb Flesh album in May, Benjamin John Power in his Blanck Mass guise rounds the year off nicely with the Great Confuso EP. Part II is a little bit too crazy for me but is bookended by 2 of the best bits of music I’ve heard all year. Truly an artist maturing with every release.

My wife and I were at the London gig with these guys a week before all the insanity in Paris took place. The band and crew are such lovely people and our hearts go out to them and all the fans involved. We hope to see them back in the UK soon and that they will be remembered for the right reasons not just because of the shootings. This was the best track on their latest album ‘Zipper Down’.

I’ve had a soft spot for Mark Ronson for a long time. I was gutted when the second single ‘Feel Right’ (way better than Uptown Funk in my opinion) was too filthy to play at home in front of my 9 year old but at the same time I like the fact that he didn’t clean it up. Daffodils is amazing and it features Kevin Parker from Tame Impala so I basically can’t lose. This opened up my DJ sets for most of the summer. Check out this live version with a cheeky Riders on the Storm bassline and some seriously eccentic lead guitar antics!

The end of this sounds so much like Belfast by Orbital that I was immediately transported to a rave in 1992. So much good old school house being produced at the moment. If you like this sort of stuff check out Tuff City Kids and Paul Woolford’s Special Request project.

For me Ghostface is one of the greatest rappers ever. He tells a story like no other and the marriage of his vocals and Jazz trio Badbadnotgood’s backing tracks is unique in my opinion. It’s like listening to Rakim spit over the Superfly soundtrack only better. It also features Antiswarm favourite Doom and has some incredible instrumental tracks as well. Killah!

I like listening to this in the morning as it’s very atmospheric and chilled. Kompakt released this and the quality of their output is always top notch. A close second on this label would be the Kolsch ’1983′ album. The Germans stayed strong this year.

Took a while to grow on me but this is on par with the last 2 albums in terms of quality i.e. excellent. They straddle a sort of proggy, garage, indie style I’ve never heard anywhere else and live they are a demented gonzo affair with 2 drummers. Very, very good!

Long after the Antiswarm was knitting together the psychedelic strands twitching over the horizon from Australia, the Amorphous Androgynous give us an in depth look at the OZ scene both new and old. If you’ve never heard the Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble comps you are in for a treat and this edition doesn’t disappoint.

Childish but it makes me feel like I’m a spy on my way to work! Henry Jackson turns in a brilliant fusion of dark electronica and orchestral pieces in his score for a film that along side The Men from Uncle hopefully paves the way for more playful spy/adventure films. Hans Zimmer take note.

It’s weird for me to see other end of year lists and agree with them but Jamie XX and Tame Impala have made the sort of albums this year it would be churlish to deny. There’s one duff track in the middle. Delete it is my advice. Here’s the brilliant Special Request remix of ‘Loud Places’. Enjoy!

As a format the album’s relevance is rightly questioned these days but I still seem to be listening to a hell of lot of them. So if you enjoy an album too and you can be arsed to listen to any of the above you’ll hear there’s quite a lot ambient stuff in there especially Vermont, The Temples remix album (both masterpieces in my opinion) and special mention has to go to Matt Berry who turned in a soundscape album with head nods to Pink Floyd’s spacier moments and KLF’s Chill Out. There are only 2 tracks on it, both 23 minutes long so what with his Toast of London series the man is a god in the Antiswarm’s household right now. Continuing the good work done by Tame Impala, Jagwar Ma and Pond, fellow Aussies King Grizzard release their 5th album and it’s killer, chocked full of weird detunings and probably the most adrenalin fuelled tunes of all year. The first 3 tracks all run together and it’s a hell of a lot of fun. Also from that neck of the woods, The John Steel Singers (terrible name, ignore it) produced an african tinged, melodic Krautrock masterpiece. Something in the water over there on the groovier end of the spectrum right now I think.

Singles wise it’s not been the greatest year for the angrier end of music with some significant ball dropping by Fucked Up, Cerebral Ballzy and The Datsuns to name a few. So I thought I’d include a few adrenalin soaked tunes here to try a redress the balance. Shouts then to Trash Talk for delivering a classic in the shape off SOS that shows a different, more atmospheric take on their normal straightforward hardcore (it probably just sounds like shouting to you but give it a go eh?). Greys pick up the baton where Metz left off and Everett True, the featured voice of the John Steel track delivers a harrowing time travelling story of mental anguish with tongue firmly in cheek (I hope!) Elseware, Foxygen’s marvellous ‘How Can You Really’ gets included despite delivering the most disappointing album of the year in the shape of ” …And Star Power”. After last years amazing effort this seemed like someone had let the praise go to their heads and then forgotten to put any effort in. A big mess and not in a good way. C Minus! Beck hogs his sheet music album’s best track and to great effect in Heaven’s Ladder. Despite being lyrically a bit clunky it’s as close as he’s ever come to the Beatles. Great tune. Finally the massively under rated Tweak Bird turned in a slow burner of an album in the form of ‘Any Ol’ Way’. A sign of Badness was the most immediate tune that jumped out with it’s restrained tempo full of malice like the best Bonham beat. The rest of the album is not so shabby either. Check it out.

We got an exciting email yesterday with the news that an great music project that started life in the ninjatune forum is set to return in March, and even better, they teased us with a track from Andy Digitonal :

A simple concept – Musicians and DJs write music with two rules; a tempo & as you may have guessed, a bar count. The resultant pieces of music are then blended into something more than the sum of it’s parts. A mesmeric mix where no individual track outstays it’s welcome. It is fluid, fast moving and surprising. The lack of parameters leave the doors wide open for some unexpected interpretations. You never know what is round the corner.At times it’s reminiscent of the masterpiece 70 minutes of madness, but what’s particularly enjoyable is the knowledge that the guys behind it are just in it for the kick of making something good.